After Vanity Fair published a not-so flattering description of Chula Vista Wednesday in its December issue, city Mayor Cheryl Cox told NBC San Diego she was astonished.
The piece about the Facebook feud famed Winklevoss twins by Dana Vachon calls Chula Vista “a sputtering neon error of beauty academies and pawnshops, recently terrorized by a homicidal Tijuana drug gang skilled at dissolving bodies in chemicals.”
The glossy-paged article further disses Chula Vista, the location of the Olympic training center, claiming the area’s highways were built upon “severed heads.”
“What would motivate someone to write this?” Cox said. “It’s absolutely untrue.”
Cox was in such disbelief about the article that she decided to write a letter to Vanity Fair’s editor, Graydon Carter. She told him the negative slant was misleading and false. Cox also made sure to Cc the Chula Vista city attorney in the message.
“These aren’t even facts… this is sensational journalism,” Cox said. “I’d love to have Vanity Fair send a reporter tell the true story.”
What worried Cox the most is that the piece contained distasteful undertones about the city’s residents.
“It was ultimately a slur against the Hispanic community,” she said.
Cox said several Chula Vista residents wrote her about the piece, saying they would write to complain about the misleading slant.
“I hope [the magazine] gets inundated,” Cox said. “If it happens to us it could happen to anyone.”
